Announcing 2026 Eastern Riverina Writers Grant Recipients
2026 Eastern Riverina Writers Grant recipients. Left to right: Katrina Roe, Sulari Goonetilleke, Gabrielle Tozer, James Mills, Craig Steven Palmer (See Me Hear Me Theatre), Victoria Vigenser, Lindsay Martin, and Rachel Johnston (We Mavericks), and Phillippa Heinecke (Booranga Writers Centre).
Eastern Riverina Arts is pleased to announce the 10 successful recipients of the 2026 Eastern Riverina Writers Grant.
In 2026, Eastern Riverina Arts administered a one-off grant round for regional writers. The Eastern Riverina Writers Grant, also supported by Create NSW, aimed to bolster the skills, networks, and professional capacity of local writers or support ambitious projects undertaken by local writing groups and collectives. The total funding available for this grant was $13,500.
This program is proudly funded by the NSW Government through Arts Restart.
2026 Eastern Riverina Writers Grant Recipients
Individuals
Projects that ‘level up’ a writer’s practice or professional development.
Gabrielle Tozer ($750)
Gabrielle’s Writing in the Wild project will integrate community into her writing practice by attending WRK HRS' creative co-working days in Wagga Wagga.
James Mills ($750)
Funding will allow the upgrade of James’ writing workflow with a professional digital asset management system to organise and safeguard the growing manuscripts, research, and visual materials for his project, Mallee’s Map.
Katrina Roe ($750)
Katrina will attend the CYA conference and be featured as a CYA success story. Her book ‘The Stolen Child’ was published after winning CYA’s Published Author section in 2023.
Lachlan Brown ($750)
The poet Lachlan Brown will be visiting UT Arlington and Fort Worth, Texas USA in order to work with Dr Nathanael O'Reilly on a series of poetic responses to suburbia in the USA and the Riverina.
Sulari Goonetilleke ($750)
Attendance of award-winning author Sulari Goonetilleke as a featured writer at the Hamptons Whodunnit Writers Festival in the Hamptons, New York.
Zajkel Zaia ($750)
A professional development opportunity for Zajkel complete an industry-standard first draft as a part of screenplay AFTRS’s online Screenwriting for Film Bootcamp.
Projects
Impactful projects and creative collaborations.
Booranga Writers Centre ($3000)
The Booranga Writers' Centre podcast will feature interviews with visiting writers, readings, behind-the-scenes discussions, and educational content relevant to both emerging and established writers.
See Me Hear Me Theatre Inc ($1500)
See Me Hear Me Theatre will develop a new production where contemporary songs are integral to the narrative but performed in a 1950s West Coast Jazz style, played live by a small ensemble with a vocalist. A collaboration between writer Craig Palmer and consulting musician James Palmer, both based in Tumut.
We Mavericks ($1500)
This project supports writing that forms the basis of We Mavericks' third album, thematically rooted in finding a sense of home and exploring common cultural ground in the melting pot of modern Australia.
Riverina Readers Festival ($3000)
Writing in the Riverina is a 7-day program for one Australian published author from a culturally and linguistically diverse background, First Nations background and/or writer living with disability to exclusively write towards their fictional work, upskill local writers and readers, and appear exclusively at the one-day Riverina Readers Festival.